AT&T Completes Acquisition Of Qualcomm’s FLO TV Spectrum [After The Fall Of FLO TV, A Whole Lot Of Bandwidth Gets Available--AT&T Takes It Over With Some Pleasant Plans For It]

Posted on TFTS by Steve Anderson on Tuesday, 27. December 2011 under: Audio,Visual, Internet Highlights

And so ends, conclusively, the story of FLO TV. Our own Robert Nelson brought you the story that AT&T was looking to take over Qualcomm’s bandwidth just over a year ago, and now, the job is done, the papers signed, and AT&T has some impressive new bandwidth counts on its side.

FLO TV, a mobile streaming service that streamed video to portable base stations on the go, collapsed late in 2010, planning to shut down its services completely in March of this year, complete with refunds to those who had bought in just ahead of the collapse and still had time available. And indeed, the actual acquisition of same was set to take a good long time, with the completion of the sale set for “the second quarter of 2011″. Well, we’re here…barely…but AT&T got its go-ahead from the FCC only recently, and then, five days later, AT&T issued word saying that they had the bandwidth and were looking to get started with it.

And now that AT&T has the bandwidth in hand, it’s looking to start using said bandwidth to light a fire under its 4G LTE offerings, which is definitely going to be useful considering that Verizon’s 4G network has been in the midst of massive expansion for the last several months now. AT&T badly needs to keep up with Verizon’s expanses, lest it lose ground to its very close competitor.

It’s a crying shame, of course, to lose FLO TV’s bandwidth, but considering how many web-based options are already out there for television–from Netflix to Hulu and beyond–getting a better 4G bandwidth available in more places sounds like a substantially better option to me than a subscription-based feed of Comedy Central and the like anyway.

But what do you guys think here? Is more 4G better than FLO TV? Are you looking forward to better 4G from AT&T, or are you sticking with Verizon? We always love hearing from you, so head on down to the comments section below and tell us what you think!